X, Sheeran’s second album, was nominated for Grammys for Album of the Year and Pop Vocal Album. It also took home the Brit Award for British Album of the Year. It was supported by five official singles, although everything from the album either hit the UK charts or sold at least 200,000 copies.

Sheeran said he “started off making another acoustic record, and it turned into a neo-soul-funk record.” WK He credited producers like Rick Rubin and Benny Blanco for pulling him out of his comfort zone. WK All Music Guide glibly called Ed Sheeran “the UK’s answer to Jason Mraz,” AMG noting that Sheeran, like, Mraz, “plays around with hip-hop cadences but at his core he’s a singer/songwriter…who prefers love tunes to songs of protest.” AMG Not only can Sheeran “ramble out a rap, but he’s also quite comfortable with luxurious, shimmering textures and buoyant melodies.” AMG

“Naturally, these traits surface clearly on Sing, a collaboration with Pharrell Williams that contains some of the natural ebullience of ‘Happy.” AMG Sheeran noted that he tried to channel Justin Timberlake’s debut album, Justified. WK It ended up as the first single from the album.

Sheeran wrote the second single, Don’t, about a girlfriend, singer Elle Goulding, who cheated on him with a close friend. He said he played the song for his friend Taylor Swift and her response is that she would never want to piss him off that much. WK Sheeran first recorded it with Blanco, then again with Rubin, and finally the two producers came together for the final version. WK

The ballad Thinking Out Loud was released as the third single. Sheeran said the song, written about his then-girlfriend, was his favorite from the album. He said it was a soul song and “the only happy song on the album.” WK However, All Music Guide said, “When Sheeran sings slow, he rarely sings sad: he’s a hybrid of Chris Martin and David Grey, a boy next door who hasn’t lost his shaggy romanticism. His sweetness isn’t cloying, not even when the productions are aimed straight down the middle of the road, which they often are on.” AMG

Photograph, the fifth single from the album, was written with Johnny McDaid of Snow Patrol, as was Nina. McDaid called the latter a “self-deprecating” love song about “heartbreak.” WK Sheeran referred to “Photograph” as the song “that will change my career path,” WK believing it to be the one song that would sell the album. WK

“His boyishness doesn’t give these immaculate confections grit so much as a wet, wide-eyed puppy dog heart…Whenever the mildly manic rapping surfaces…it’s a bit of sand in the Vaseline, preventing X from operating as smoothly as it’d like. Nevertheless, these gangly excursions in rap are evidence of Sheeran’s youth and his generation, something that keeps X from being merely a bit of excellently crafted mature pop and gives it some appealing character.” AMG

Sunday, June 15, 2014

My parents drug me to church every Sunday morning, but my real religion came when we got home. I raced to my bedroom, flipped on the radio, and allowed American Top 40 to convert me into the music-list junkee I am today. Had my parents wanted someone at whom to point a finger of blame, they need look no farther than Kemel Amen Kasem.

Better known as Casey Kasem, he was the voice of American Top 40. Based on Billboard magazine’s Hot 100 singles chart, the radio show counted down the hits every week. Casey peppered his broadcasts with biographical tidbits, trivia, and the simultaneously cheesy and touching long-distance dedications. That voice which challenged listeners to “Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars” is now permanently silent. Kasem died on June 15, 2014, at age 82. He is survived by his wife, Jean Thompson (married 1980-2014), four children, and four grandchildren. He was diagnosed in 2007 with Lewy body dementia, a condition which left him unable to speak.

He was born on April 27, 1932, in Detroit, Michigan where his Lebanese-immigrant parents worked as grocers. He had his first taste for radio covering sports at Detroit’s Northwestern High. When he went to Wayne State University for college, he voiced children on radio programs. In 1952, he was drafted by the Army to serve in Korea, where he worked as a DJ and announcer for the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service.

Once back in the states, he jumped around in various radio jobs in Detroit, Buffalo, New York, Cleveland, San Franciso, Oakland, and Los Angeles. He launched American Top 40 on July 4, 1970 and served as its host until 1988, as well as a second stint from 1998 to 2004. He also worked as a voice actor, most notably as Shaggy from Scooby-Doo cartoon and Robin in Super Friends.

List background: site says list was “painstakingly compiled from many sources on the ‘net (including Billboard charts, album charts, and various surveys and polls), with a good deal of common sense thrown in.

This is a list of the top-charting country songs on the Billboard Hot 100, not the biggest charting songs on the country charts. Consequently, while these are country songs, they are more pop-oriented.

Billboard’s “All-Time Top 100 #1 Hits, 1944-1997” (1997).

This is a list from pages 508-9 of Joel Whitburn’s Top Country Singles: 1944-1997 (4th edition). These are the biggest songs to hit the country charts based on total weeks at #1. Tiebreakers are then decided by weeks in the top 10, weeks in the top 40, and then total weeks on the chart.

David Cantwell and Bill Friskics-Warren Heartaches by the Number: Country Music’s 500 Greatest Singles. Vanderbilt University Press and Country Music Foundation Press; 2003.

No details on how or when this top 100 ranked list was created. Introduction says simply that “the Country Musicologist has utilized a special formula (kept locked up with the colonel's secret recipe, we are told) to devise the top 100 country music hits of all time.” No commentary.

“Fancy” was the fourth single from Australian rapper Iggy Azalea’s debut album – and the one which made her a star. It topped the charts in the U.S., Canada, and New Zealand and went top ten in Australia, the United Kingdom, and other countries. The “electro hop” song was written by Azalea (real name Amethyst Kelly) and Charli XCX (real name Charlotte Aitchison) with the production teams known as “The Invisible Men” and “The Arcade.”

When the song hit #1 in the U.S., Azalea was also a guest rapper on Ariana Grande’s “Problem,” the #2 hit. This made Azlaea only the sixth artist in history to hold down the top two slots and only the third female artist – after Ashanti and Mariah Carey – to have her first two Hot 100 hits in the top five simultaneously. Only Azalea and the Beatles had the distinction of having their first two Hot 100 singles at #1 and #2 simulatenously. WK The song also topped MTV and iTunes’ lists of best songs of 2014. WK

MTV Buzzworthy’s Brad Stern said of the song, “Not since Fergie’s ‘Glamourous’ has there been such a spectactularly sass-filled ode to the glam life.” WKIdolator’s Mike Wass called it a “swag-drenched hip hop/pop delight” and Hip Hop DX’s Janice Llamoca said it was “a hip hop-slash-pop party anthem.” WKHip Hop Wired’s Chris Tomas said Charli XCX “provides a very potent chorus that women will be chanting in their clubs, cars, and the like.” WK Not all reviews were glowing; About.com’s Bill Lamb said the song felt a “bit too recycled” and that the lyrics had been done better by Stefani nearly a decade earlier on “Luxurious.” WK

The video was directed by Director X and featured Azalea and Charli XCX in the roles of Beverly Hills’ socialites Cher and Tai from the 1995 American comedy film Clueless starring Alicia Silverstone. Both the movie and the video used Los Angeles’ Grant High School as a filming location and outfits in the video were designed to match the film’s clothing with slight updates. The Huffington Post’s Chanel Parks offered props to Iggy for her “music video homage to our favorite movie of all time” WK and Paste magazine’s Taalur Ramsey praised the video as a combination of “a quintessential 90s culture moment with [Iggy’s] hip-hop vibes.” WKEntertainment Weekly named it the best video of 2014. WK

Note: Footnotes (raised letter codes) refer to sources frequently cited on the blog. Numbers following the letter code indicate page numbers. If the raised letter code is a link, it will go directly to the correct page instead of the home page of a website. You can find the sources and corresponding footnotes on the “Lists” page in the “Song Resources” section.

Sunday, June 1, 2014

Click on any date below to see music makers’ birthdays on that day. Click here to return to the main music makers’ birthday page. Note: Names listed in bold have had dates verified with at least two sources to (hopefully) ensure accuracy. Please email Dave’s Music Database with any corrections.

John William Stevens (1940). English jazz drummer with Spontaneous Music Ensemble. Died 9/13/1994.

Nicolas Roussakis (1934). Composer.

Joao Gilberto (1931). Brazilian singer and guitarist.

Vasile Herman (1929). Composer.

Judy Garland (1922). American actress and singer (1939’s The Wizard of Oz and its iconic song “Over the Rainbow”, “The Trolley Song”). Born Frances Ethel Gumm. Mother of singer Liza Minelli. Died 6/22/1969.

John Rostill (1942). English bassist and composer with the Shadows. Died 11/26/1973.

Lamont Dozier (1941). American songwriter and record producer. Part of Motown’s Holland-Dozier-Holland songwriting and production team (the The Supremes’ “Where Did Our Love Go”, “Baby Love”, “Stop! In the Name of Love”, and “You Can’t Hurry Love”; the Four Tops’ “Baby, I Need Your Loving”, “I Can’t Help Myself”, and “Reach Out (I’ll Be There)”).

Bruce Johnston (1942). American musician and songwriter with the Beach Boys (“Good Vibrations”, Pet Sounds), but best known as a songwriter (Barry Manilow’s “I Write the Songs”). Born Benjamin Baldwin.